Friday, February 15, 2013

They ripped you from my guts

I don't have pleasant happy birth stories to tell my three kids. Basically, they ripped you from my guts. Today is my youngest sons birthday. His ripping was the most pleasant of the three.

When we found out I was pregnant for the second time, after miscarriage, I was fooled into a sense of security. I thought birth was this natural thing involving some mild sedation and voila! They hand you a baby, put it in cute clothes, and you live happily every after. That was the way my mother had always made it sound. She told me about how, in her day, they knocked her out and when she woke up the baby was all cleaned up. I thought that I would go into the hospital and instinctually know how to push my lovey out. Uh, no. Not what happened.

The first issue with baby one was I gained WAY too much weight. In fact, you are not eating for two. When you are a fatty and old aka advanced maternal age, every visit is about creating fear in the heart of the crazy old lady who dared to fight biology and get PREGNANT rather than read Cosmo and enjoy our plight as a crone. Between the morning sickness and prenatal testing blues, I developed high blood pressure. See- we told you fatty. You are too friggin old. Now you have to come in for monitoring. Every time without fail, the THOUGHT of going there would send my blood pressure through the roof.

Finally, at 40 weeks, my pressure was just too high and they needed to induce me. I didn't realize at the time but induce+old= c-section much of the time. All that birth intuition escaped me and I went straight for the drugs as soon as they were available. I tried, I really tried to push you out sweetie. I was in labor for well over a day and pushed for hours. Between them barely able to get a vein (they wanted to put a line in my neck. I refused. Get someone else-now) and the trauma of getting the epidural turned off while you were pushing on my spine, I was begging for the c-section at the end.

There you were- beautiful, perfect, tiny. You were not eight pounds- the first in a series the doctors were wrong about. It turned out I didn't need an HIV test lovey. You just gained weight slowly. You are still tall and slim like the day you were born.

My birth story for my child born today was a breeze. He was conceived as a birthday present and was a gift from the start. I was cut on time after an hour being poked in the back by an incompetent medical resident. When they were in there tying my tubes, they told me I only had one working tube from the start. At my age and with one tube, all my children are literally miracles. I don't take my gifts lightly. They ripped you from my guts and I love you. Happy birthday to my son.

6 comments:

I'm actually thankful for my C-sections! When my kids ask how the baby gets out...I tell them the truth. I went to the hospital and the doctor cut you out with a special knife. :) They'll figure it out when they're older. haha!